Checking in with Sunny Sweeney
Trophy is one of my favourite albums. Period. So I had a chat with Sunny about it and her upcoming new music. Mainly though we talked about her live shows, how much she loves playing them, and how much her fans mean to her.
So first of all, I've been a big fan for ages. So thanks for talking with me. My first question is about touring. You’re an artist who likes touring so the last year must have been a bit weird for you. What have you been up to?
Well, yes, I love touring. It's funny because I have friends that kind of run the gamut of people just starting out and then really, really successful people. And I've had both ends of those people be like; “I've never met anyone that likes being on the road as much as you, ever”. And that is so true I guess it's great that I like being on the road because that's what I have to do for work!
But this year has been so difficult because we've been having to not be on the road, obviously, and come up with ways to make money and support ourselves while we're at home. I like to think that musicians are very resourceful and we've all kind of shocked even ourselves with the things that we've come up with over the last year to kind of keep the boat afloat, so to speak.
“There’s there is some really, really country stuff on it. But also Stevie Nicks, Tom Petty, Neil Young, there is some stuff that is very much down the vein of those artists”
And it feels really good. We did a full band live stream, and we ended up making a record out of it. We released that in November. And then we made a studio record also that's going to be out this year with Paul Cauthen producing. And it's going to be very cool. I am so excited about it. I'm really, really excited about it.
New music? That is exciting. What can you tell me about it?
Paul Cauthen's producing our new album. He's from where I'm from, we're both from northeast Texas, and I think our mentality is a lot the same, and we just worked really well together and it was really, really fun. I'm super excited about it.
I’m not one hundred percent on the name of it yet, but I will tell it to you whenever I know it. There's there is some really, really country stuff on it. Which is my heart and soul. But also Stevie Nicks, Tom Petty, Neil Young are the other quadrants of my heart. And there is some stuff that is very much down the vein of those artists as well, because I've been listening to them a ton over the last couple of years. I feel like whenever I do write music, that sometimes I'm influenced by what I've been heavily listening to and.
There are some surprise guests, there's a very, very big surprise vocalist on one song that I'm so, so excited about and there's a couple of songs that I didn't write or co-write. One was written by Waylon Payne and Kendall Marvel and as soon as my manager sent it to me I wrote him back and asked whose song is that? And he goes yours if you want it. And I was like, I want it. It's bad ass.
So. I'm super excited about this new album, I really am. It's going to be really cool and it's going to be something a little different.
Have you enjoyed anything about staying at home over the last 12 months?
Yeah. I mean I didn't expect to enjoy it. I mean it's made me check myself basically and be grateful for having time with my little dog and my parents and my family. Because we're usually gone all the time! And so it's been really weird. We have a huge, huge family and so obviously we can't all get together. But I mean, I've gone to see my dad in northeast Texas. I've driven up there a couple of times. And it's just been it's been really it's been very eye-opening. And it's made me reassess my priorities, which is very adult of me to say.
I've learnt that I don't have to go out every night. I can get food at a grocery store and eat at my house a week in a row without even leaving if I don't want to. I've never done that in my life!
You’ve got some shows coming up, do you think it's going to be weird playing in person shows next month?
Well, the last couple of weekends, we've actually kind of gotten a little semblance of normalcy because we've had weekend shows. But we go on our first tour in about a week or so, for a couple of weeks. And that's going to be the longest that we've been gone for since February 2020. So it's going to be awesome. I mean, when we went out last weekend, we did some acoustic stuff and we were like driving down the street through West Texas. I was like, I feel like I'm doing something wrong. Like I feel like I escaped jail or something. I don't know. It's strange just to be out.
“These fans have been incredible. I’ve cried about how much I love my fans. They have legitimately kept all of us afloat this whole year, whether it’s going to our website to buy T-shirts or babysitting my dog because I couldn’t board him for a couple of gigs”
I’m definitely looking forward to it and we're all vaccinated, so that's good. I think that will take a little bit of the fear out of it and let us be able to relax a little and have fun and not be so stressed out as we were in October when we went out for about a week. Obviously still taking it very seriously, but I think that we can find a happy medium.
Is there anything you haven't missed about being on the road?
There's nothing I hate about it. I mean, I'm tired when I'm touring. I’ve got friends who have kids who are tired all the time, and that's kind of how I feel with touring. I figure I'm going to be exhausted when we're out all the time because you just don't sleep enough, no matter how much you enjoy sleeping, you just don't get enough sleep. But you have to power through because there's a gig or there's a meet and greet or there's an interview or something that you have to do all the time.
So I have caught up on my sleep this year, I'm hoping that I go back out just completely refreshed. I didn't even know I like to sleep this much. I've slept so much this year it's crazy. I’ve never really been a sleeper because we don't have the luxury of sleeping. It's like being a parent, I guess, like, you just don't have that luxury of sleeping when you want. But this year I have definitely slept my arse off for sure.
You’re not even bothered about the travel aspect of it?
I live out of a suitcase. I love it. I know where everything is. I know what my options are as far as clothing goes. I just know what I need to have and then I hit the road. I love my job. I do.
You mentioned earlier about artists being resourceful. That's a really interesting point, and you're right. I do feel like in the music industry, artists specifically, have found other ways of doing it. I know you've been doing kind of live streams and you’ve got a Patreon.
“Independent music fans are literally the best fans that have ever existed, the best people that have ever existed. They want their artists, plural, to succeed.”
Well I was doing Patreon before last year, but I mean necessity is the mother of invention. When my manager called last year and said we're going to cancel a month's worth of shows, I freaked out and I was like; “what do you mean a month? You can't just cancel a month's shows.” He's like; “well, it's happening. So you need to figure it out.” Now, looking back, I wish I would have just welcomed that and taken that first 30 days to digest it instead of fighting it and being pissed about it, because I was so mad, everybody was mad.
Then after about the first three or four weeks of lots of crying and lots of stress and lots of worry. I was like, this is fine, it's OK, nobody's getting kicked out of any housing or you're not going to lose your car. You know what I mean?
The sheer panic of it at first was just, what do we do? And then when once we got going, I was like, this is OK… Independent music fans are literally the best fans that have ever existed, the best people that have ever existed. They want their artists, plural, to succeed. They want to be the one that goes to one of their friends and goes; “hey, have you heard of so-and-so?”
I'm that way. I'm a music fan first. I love music. I love it. And I love being able to show someone something that they haven't seen before or heard before music-wise and then have people grasp on to that person. So these fans have been incredible. I've cried about how much I love my fans. They have legitimately kept all of us afloat this whole year, whether it's going to our website to buy T-shirts or babysitting my dog because I couldn't board him for a couple of gigs because the boarding places were closed. I would take my dog with me to the gig and put him in his little purse, take him to my gig, and then I'd have a fan sit there in the front row with my dog in their lap. They just want to help so bad. And totally not joking, I have not bought one bottle of wine this whole year, my fans have brought one for me. I mean, like, it's just incredible.
There have been some upsides to the last 12 months then?
I honestly feel like it has broadened my name to a different horizon. I feel like there's a lot of people that accidentally stumbled on me, and once we start touring again, then they're going to come back out because it made it so easy for everyone in the entire world to find you. I'm very grateful, actually, for that.
It shows that independent artists who put in put in the work to build up an audience have maybe done better over the past year than some of the slightly bigger label artists who've done none of the work to get an audience.
I feel I really I'm glad you said that because I really feel like we have benefited from it. And like I said, these fans are, for lack of a better term, rabid. [At this point as with every Zoom call ever had Sunny’s dog joins us. And he is tiny.] I don't know if everybody feels the same way about their fans, but I make it very clear to them how grateful I am for them all the time because I truly from the bottom of my heart. I am so grateful for every single fan that has ever done anything for me, but this year, especially because it's like it's taken our self-esteem, it's taken our income, it's given us this fear that we've never had of; “what the hell is going to happen now.”
And all of them are just like; we got this. We're cool. You're cool. It's good. We're good. We're going to move forward. Just be patient. And it's working. And the light is at the end of the tunnel.
Can I ask a few questions actually about Trophy? That was like four years ago now I guess, how do you look back on the record now?
You know, every record that I've done now, I've done five, it's weird because I never do all of the songs live on a record because I like doing some from each record doing some cover songs. So there's no way to do all of the songs all of the time. So I feel like a Trophy has some really cool songs on it and we haven't always played them. But this year I've been resurrecting different songs off of different records and I really love that record. I'm so proud of it. And there's a couple of songs on there that fans really like. I guess ultimately the reason that an artist makes music is because they want their fans to like it. It still shocks me when people know words to songs, I mean, even after 18 years of doing this, it's that's why I do it.
And then when people go; “hey, can you play blah, blah, blah, this song, you never play that song.” I'm like, yeah, I can play it. I just I'm shocked that, you know, it, that means that they've listened to it's just it's very humbling. Fans are the reason that I do what I do like hands down because it's not for me. It's the most gratifying job. For that reason, you know.
It's like nothing else, especially if it's a personal song that you really never thought you’d ever put out.
Is there one of your songs in particular that you've been really surprised that people have kind of resonated with it and taken it to heart?
There’s a song on Trophy called ‘Bottle By My Bed’, it's about wanting a baby and going through a miscarriage and all of the stuff that comes with that, I just thought it was just a very personal song. I wrote it with Lori McKenna and it was just a really pretty song. It's a different side of me too. Country music's made up of so many different components, you drink and cheat and lie in real life, you know, but I thought this is a different kind of song for me and boy, I did not think anybody would get it. I just thought people would be like, oh, that's a sweet song. But there have been stories that I get in my inbox; “My husband and I have been struggling to have a kid for 13 years of our marriage and I've had nine miscarriages and I didn't want to live anymore because I didn't think that I was worth anything because I couldn't give my husband a baby. And then a miracle child came.” I mean, stories like that where I'm just; “oh, my God, that's heavy.” I can't believe that people feel that way about something that I helped create.
That's one of my favourite songs on that record actually. So, when you're writing these songs are you ever thinking about what you're going to do with it live, or are you in the moment when you're when you're writing?
There's two guys I write with and they're like my brothers, Buddy Owens and Galen Griffin, and I've written a ton of songs with them and when we're writing we are 100% not rooting for anybody else but ourselves because we just like the songs that we write together. What we do is we usually write like three or four songs in a day because I don't go there very often as they live in Nashville. So we usually write a bunch while we're all together and I always end up taking one or two of them and either recording it or playing it live. But like there have been instances where we've written a song and we're done with it and as soon as we're done with it, I go, I cannot wait to play this or I cannot wait to record this.
I feel like everybody has those songs where you hope that you have something special, that you feel like you know what your fans want. Because I want my fans to love it, but also we all write for ourselves sometimes to just get something off your back, but then sometimes those are the most touching.
I mean, I'm a human, you're a human and like Willie Nelson said; “the one thing that we all have in common is pain.” So not everybody's an alcoholic. Not everybody has lost a child. Not everybody has lost a parent, but everybody has suffered pain.
That's why I think I love country music, is because there is pain, tangible pain that you can feel sometimes. I told Jessi Colter this when I got to meet her, I remember being a little kid listening to ‘I'm Not Lisa’ on my dad's record player. And I remember being a small young and hearing that song and thinking to myself; “wow, this lady is so sad.” I remember thinking that I didn't know what the song was about, I just remember loving her voice and thinking that the music was pretty and how sad she sounded.
And music resonates with people in a really deep way sometimes.
Yea. I'm a music fan. I love music. I love listening to music. I love making music. I love playing music. I just I love music and and I love that it brings people together. This girl came to my show in Dallas and she said; “Do you recognise me?” And I said; “I do, but I can't remember where I know you from because it's out of context right now.”
She's like: “Yeah, I'm not from here.” And I said; “Where are you from again?”
And she said; “Amarillo.” And I was like; “Oh, yeah. I remember you and your dad came to my shows in Amarillo.”
She's like; “Yeah, he died a couple of months ago. He was your biggest fan. He literally is the reason that I even know who you are and I will never not come and see you because it brings me memories of my dad.”
I almost started crying when she told me that because again, I haven't lost a parent, but I can imagine the pain and the hurt. But she was using my music to bring herself feelings about her dad that she just lost, I mean, are you kidding me? Of course I'm going to keep doing this. It's just so heartbreaking, but it also made me so happy.
I guess that sort of thing is a responsibility that you probably never really imagined?
I wanted free beer and free like hamburgers. [laughs] That's all I wanted. So I've pretty much exceeded every expectation that I have ever thought that I would have in this business. I mean, I've travelled to twenty or so countries playing music, and I’ve been all over the world. I've been in every State in the US playing music, and I've made some of the best friends that I could have ever asked for.
I will never take any gig for granted ever again because even if there is only one person at your show, they paid money that they went to work for all week to be at your show. So they deserve to get a show as if there were ten thousand people there.
I actually didn't realise how much I loved my job. I knew I loved my job. But I really, really love my job. It has afforded me so many, so many opportunities in this world. I've played the Grand Ole Opry! Are you kidding me? I can't believe that. I still can't believe that, the Grand Ole Opry.
To find out more about Sunny you can visit her official website, or check out Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
Sunny’s recent live album is streaming on Tidal, Spotify and Apple Music now, and you should buy it from her shop.
